Nov 5, 2009

Danish TV 2 Is No Friend Of Linux

The Danish TV station TV 2 has been using Microsoft's Media player to display its content on Sputnik for a long time. This has caused several problems, especially for those not using Windows or Internet Explorer.
It has been decided to switch to another system, and here the choice fell on Microsoft's Silverlight as a replacement for Flash. The Danish news website Version2 have asked TV 2 why they chose as they did.
The most obvious reason was that the whole infrastructure behind Sputnik was already based on Microsoft Media Video format, which Silverlight can use directly. If they had chosen to use something else like Flash, almost everything would need to be rewritten.
Silverlight has integrated DRM technology and copy protection which is a request from several of the content providers.

Linux users left in the cold.
Although everything is now working on TV 2 Sputnik for both Mac and Firefox users who have the Silverlight plugin installed, Linux users are still left out in the cold.
Open source Moonlight project is an attempt to create a Silverlight clone for Linux platform and developed in collaboration between Novell and Microsoft.

I must admit that I have not tested the player with Moonlight. I am quite sure that our DRM-protected content will not work

says Magnus Rask Detlif. He adds that the new player is still in beta, and therefore may be minor errors.
I would have liked that a huge website like TV 2 would have chosen a more open solution. A setback for Linux as a desktop platform, but a win for TV 2 and Microsoft.